Ok, this has been on my mind for a while, and I value your opinion.
I post at anime message boards, which tend to have quite a few teenagers. Naturally, there are the usually crushes between the members and such. Two members started talking on AIM, started calling each other once a week, then twice a week, and so on.
The young lady lives at one end of Canada, the young man at the other. They are both 16. Well, the cliff notes version is that his mom talked to her mom (because the two wanted to meet). Next thing you know, he is on a plane, by himself to her place. He stays at her house for a week (during which they have sex 9 times, using condoms).
Now, I know that teenagers have sex, I’m not naive. But something about this whole scenario doesn’t sit right with me. Any thoughts?
As a parent, that wouldn’t be my son nor my daughter involved in that mess, but since the parents involved didn’t ask me what I think I’m not about to open a can of whoop-ass over it.
The thing I’ve come to believe is that everyone’s got a good reason for what they do. It may not be my reason (and it may not even be a good reason), but I gotta hear it first before I can decide.
I agree that it is not something I would encourage a teen I cared about to do.
If it was a purely sexual arrangement, it is a health risk to hop into bed with someone whose history consists only of some stuff they wanted to tell you online.
If these kids are truly trying to have a relationship, it is still a very questionable arrangement.
brand new long distance relationship + ephemeral nature of the typical teen romance + sex right away = recipe for heartbreak (or worse) IMO
We all know that teen romances fail more often than they work out. Online/LD romance also are at special risk of failure…the very fact that the meeting is a long-anticipated, expensive endeavour puts a lot of pressure on both parties to rush into things (namely sex) that normal relationships generally take more slowly. That’s a very bad combination of factors in a relationship IMO.
I know someone who has had a good experience with letting a new online friend crash at their place will probably get upset if I say this, but I think it’s a rather poor idea all around to let an online friend stay at your home on the very first meeting. Yeah, you do know them better than the typical first date, but there is still a lot that is left unknown. You really don’t know if they are a thief or con artist, a pyromaniac, prone to violent outbursts, or who knows what else. If you get a strange vibe from an online friend you’ve met in a public place, you can easily walk away from the meeting. No such option when the person is bunking with you.
It’s so easy to purposely mask bad qualities online, and some people aren’t even fully aware of their own problems that may be obvious to others (ex: the type of people who need the help of GentleHints.com ).
If I were one of the teens involved, no, I wouldn’t do this myself…and if I were one of the parents involved, no, I wouldn’t let my teen do this. The question is: What did the parents expect to happen? I suppose the parents could be of the “They’re gunna do it anyway” school of thought, but it seems more likely that they simply overestimated their ability to supervise the kids.
Well, when I was 16 (in UT) my OL BF(From CA) came out to vist me for my 16th BD, he was 18. My mom allowed him to stay in our “guest room” (The camper) He stayed with us for 3 weeks. Left for 6 weeks, then came back and has been with us ever since. We’re getting married in 3 weeks, so I guess it can work out in some cases, huh?
I agree, once when I travelled to hook up with someone I met online we had sex 8 times in one day, which is still my record (I can’t talk my wife into giving it up more than twice in a day).
Hell - this past weekend I had sex with a guy from Ottawa more or less continuously for 14 hours.
I had one serious LDR when I was a kid; when I was 17 I fell in love with a boy from Toronto. We got together three times during the course of our relationship (when you are a poor college student, there are places in the world easier to get to from Montreal than Toronto). Eventually the intensity of my feelings became too painful, so I broke it off. But I don’t regret having had the relationship. And I think people say things about teenagers they wouldn’t say about people even two years older. Blessings to them, and I hope it works out to their mutual satisfaction.
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